


follow me into a swarm of bees

by elainebarrish



Category: Gone Girl (2014), Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn
Genre: F/F, I wrote half of this before the avatar fic, so it probably also feels like I was working out of the slump lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-21 03:46:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9530204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elainebarrish/pseuds/elainebarrish
Summary: rhonda boney is the only good thing in your life, and you wonder how that came about, considering that she threw you in jail and all that. there's a lot of things in your life that don't make sense, but you're definitely glad for this one thing, even as you don't understand it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> title from run run blood - phantogram and honestly there's so many more appropriate lyrics I could have picked from this album but I just couldn't resist

You and Boney form a weird sort of club, a weird thing that is technically about Nick, about Amy, but in a year of the two of you meeting, mostly just to get drunk, that’s just a pretense, something that neither of you ever really mention head on, even as you schedule “emergency” meetings when something happens. You don’t know why she still agrees, why the two of you start in The Bar and then end up going somewhere you’re way too old for, somewhere dark where the music is too loud for you to be able to think. You wonder if it’s like on TV where every detective has a case that stays with them, and if this is hers. You wonder what it would have been like to get to know her some other way, how this would have worked if she’d just been a regular at The Bar, if you’d met in Starbucks like most people seem to these days. You tell yourself that that would just be boring, that the only thing you like about Boney is her hatred of Nick and Amy, that you just keep her around because you can’t talk to anyone else about what happened (you pretend like this excuse still stands even though the two of you hardly talk about it). You pretend like your heart doesn’t race when she texts you, you pretend like you’re glad when your phone vibrates and it’s just whichever girl you’d last had a fling with instead of her, you pretend to yourself that you’d rather your phone was buzzing with a message from literally anyone but her, and you don’t manage to convince even yourself.

She texts you, asks what you’re doing on Friday, and you try to be nonchalant, tell her you can’t close The Bar early, and she just says she’ll swing by near closing so the two of you can drink, and then move somewhere else, somewhere that stays open much later. You smile through most of the next two days, because The Bar and dates with girls you don’t really like that much and whatever this is with Boney are pretty much what makes up your life (you also include Netflix as a full-time life partner).

“That detective coming by later?” One of your favourite old regulars asks as you pull him a pint, and you raise an eyebrow.

“John, what are you talking about?”

“You always get that look on your face when she’s due to show up,” he says with a shrug, handing you some crumpled dollar bills.

“Wow, maybe if you’d paid that much attention to your wife she wouldn’t have left you.” You respond, deadpan, and he laughs, shaking his head as he picks up his pint, shuffling to a table with one last comment.

“Surely you’re gonna get changed though, make an effort?”

“Fuck you John!” you resist the urge to look down, your usual tank and jeans is totally fine, it’s what you always wear, and she’ll be wearing what’s basically her work clothes anyway (although you’re always grateful for the addition of skinny jeans).

She never gives you an exact time, and you’re getting antsy by the time she comes through the door, so you pretend not to notice her until she’s taking a seat, and you try not to watch her take her coat off as you slide over a beer, opening one for yourself too because you’re not the type to let her drink alone, even if you are still technically working for the next hour. John grins at you and you flip him off while she isn’t looking. She doesn’t even bother to ask about Nick, the pretense almost entirely dissolved, just asks about that girl you were seeing last time she saw you, which you realise was only two weeks ago. You almost smile at the idea that she missed you, missed whatever this is enough to break what had been an unspoken monthly rule.

“I stopped texting her back and she gave up,” you said, shrugging, and Boney rolls her eyes.

“How are you ever gonna find a girlfriend if you just can’t be bothered to text them back?”

“You can’t say anything, you’ve literally never mentioned anyone in the entire time I’ve known you.”

“Yeah, well, most people take one look at the hours I put in at work and flee,” she shrugs, and you’re not sure whether she’s actually not bothered or if she’s just used to acting like she isn’t.

“Girlfriends are overrated,” you grin and lean in, like you’re sharing a secret. “I’m quitting.” She sniggers at that, raises an eyebrow and shakes her head as you immediately go to defend yourself. “What? I am.”

“Yeah and next time I see you there’ll be some girl that you like but not enough to keep in contact with for longer than a month.”

“Nope, I’m leaving my second job of working through every girl in Missouri, it’s taking away from from the time I have to devote to my one true love, Netflix.”

“So long as you don’t replace girls with The Crown, you hate period dramas.”

“You’re right, I do,” you laugh, try to pretend like you’re not weirdly pleased that she remembers this one random fact about you. “Those British accents though.”

“Oh come on, British accents are overrated.” She’s smiling and you want to say something about how much you fucking adore her accent, about that Southern drawl that you love even though it’s so much stronger than you’re used to.

“You’re just saying that because people like them more than your Southern drawl.”

She laughs as she drinks, inclining her head in acceptance, but still smirking anyway. “You love my accent, admit it.”

“I will admit no such thing.” You’re smiling as you ring the bell for last orders, using the customers as an excuse not to answer either way, so that she can’t press you, but she smirks at you like she knows what’re you’re thinking anyway.

You shoo everyone out, lock the door so no one can wander in and take the stool next to her, concentrating on the bottle in front of you instead of your internal debate as to whether the stools should be closer together or further away.

“So where are we going today?” You ask, because somehow she’s usually the one that picks the place, but she doesn’t look particularly like she wants to today. She looks tired, you think, and wonder if she’s been working too hard.

“Honestly I’m dead on my feet, so I was thinking we could just stay here,” she admits, and you smile.

“That actually sounds like a much better idea, I’m too old to be staggering out of clubs at 2am, which means you’re way too old.”

“Fuck you, no one’s too old for getting drunk and looking stupid,” she responds, but there’s no bite to it.

“But now we can do that from the comfort of the sofa I had installed in the back room, come on.” You lead the way around the bar, try not to think about how small the sofa is, try not to imagine various unrealistic scenarios where your thighs touch and then you end up kissing, try not to think about skimming your palm along her jaw, about cupping the back of her neck, about her hands on your hips. You grab a bottle of whiskey and some glasses on the way through, tell yourself to take it steady, to not get drunk and something really stupid, like kiss her or cry or both.

She laughs as you have to move a pile of papers off of the sofa and some empty mugs off of the low coffee table, settling with a satisfied sigh, and you sit next to her, toeing your shoes off but being careful not to touch her, finishing your beer and pouring you both new drinks, her thanks a murmur in the quiet of this room that you spend more time in than your own living room.

“Honestly I was expecting the table to be a crate of beer,” she says, that damn smirk back in place, and you roll your eyes.

“Yeah yeah fuck you, because I’m sure your apartment is so beautifully furnished.”

You’re trying not to stare, you promise you are, but she’s gesturing and smiling as she describes something that you’re totally not listening to, and you’re so glad you didn’t go out because you’d been missing out on this, on her smiling at just you, on her eyes sparkling and her cheekbones casting shadows in the dim light of the shitty floor lamp, the one that you’d stolen out of your dad’s house because it wasn’t like he was using it right now (that’s where you got the coffee table, too, but you’re not gonna tell her that).

“I can’t believe you’re actually the kind of cop that tells cop stories when you get tipsy,” you say, grinning, when she takes a pause to drink.

“What because you don’t talk about some of the more harrowing customers you’ve had?” she laughs, and you don’t consider what you say next.

“Is Amy just another fun anecdote?” you ask, and immediately wish you hadn’t because you fucking know that Boney’s not like that, has never been like that, that she’s not the kind of casually callous that you’re intimately familiar with.

“There’s nothing fun about your sister-in-law,” she replies quietly, and you want to punch yourself in the face for the way that her face dropped, for the way that she looks a little like it’d been her you punched.

“She’s your one case, huh?” Your voice is equally as quiet, and you try to think of a way to repair this mess you just created.

“Yeah,” she sighed. “It’s just that she’s a fucking psychopath, and so’s your brother for staying with her, and they’re gonna have a kid and be allowed to bring it up, while I know that Amy murdered someone to cover up her crazy revenge scheme when she decided she didn’t want to go through with it.” You both look surprised at her outburst, and you’re reminded that Boney really does believe in the law, that she itches for Amy to slip up somehow so she can put her away.

“You’ll get to throw her in jail eventually,” you laugh, bitterly. “If not you can always jail this kid because no way does that child have a hope in hell.”

“I didn’t have a hope in hell either and I turned out alright.” Boney says, and you ache because she still believes in everyone, will believe in this kid regardless of their parents. She’s so good and you don’t know how because you’ve heard enough of what she’s had to deal with that you don’t know how anyone could stay like that, because you couldn’t, you couldn’t even with a mother that loved you.

“We’ll hope for another Rhonda Boney,” you smile and she laughs, rolling her eyes.

“I guess another Margo Dunne wouldn’t be so bad either.”

“Nah, we have enough cynical bartenders around the place as it is.”

“I thought you were a bar owner not just a bartender,” she reminds you, smiling, and you laugh.

“Well we’ve got enough of those too.” You reply, and you’re glad you manage not to blush at the mention of her liking you, as if that wasn’t something you already knew, she’s never struck you as the kind of person that makes time for people she doesn’t like.

“I’m not sure detective is a future profession they’d like for their kid.”

“Well I dunno, I guess that depends on when the statute of limitations runs out?”

“For murder? Probably not fast enough for the kid to be able to ignore it if they do find out.”

“I was expecting you to just know the answer to that.”

“Oddly that isn’t something I’ve ever really needed to worry about.”

“So you don’t solve cold cases in your spare time then?”

“Don’t have enough spare time.” She smiles, and you want to reach over, want to do something, so you just fidget and drink and don’t notice that your leg is shaking until she reaches over and grabs your knee firmly, leaving you smiling sheepishly as you tuck it beneath you so you don’t start again, and try not to miss the warmth of her hand on your leg.

“And yet you waste your time with me,” you say, because self-deprecation has always been favourite kind of humour.

“Only counts as a waste if I don’t get anything out of it,” she replies, finishing her drink and refilling both of your glasses.

You laugh and shake your head. “I guess there aren’t many people of our age that’ll agree to go out to the places I do with you.”

“Plus the free booze,” she laughs, and you do too. “On a more serious note, I am glad that something good came out of the worst case in my career.”

“I like to pretend to myself that we met while you were investing in one of those enormous coffees, and then you spilt it on me or something and gave me your number.”

“I would never waste coffee like that,” she says, deadpan. “Also that sounds like you spend way too much time watching romcoms.”

“Hey, don’t insult them until you’ve seen About Time, that film changed my life,” you pause, a slow smile spreading across your face. “You think we’d make a good romcom, huh?”

She actually blushes and you want to goddamn celebrate or something. “That’s not quite what I meant -” she tries, but you’re too busy grinning, turning to face her, putting your drink down.

“I hope that that was what you meant.” Your voice is quieter, more serious, and she stops trying to dig herself out of that hole and looks at you, eyebrow raised, cheeks still flushed pink.

“You mean you were just being oblivious?”

“Are you really gonna tell me this “emergency” meeting was actually a date? I would have worn clean jeans!” You’re laughing, and so is she, and you’re both quiet for a moment, slightly awkward, like you don’t know where to go next.

“I feel like you should have been wearing clean jeans anyway, especially if you did want this to be a date.”

“I thought you were straight!” You’re laughing again, and it’s a mix of shock and disbelief and relief and happiness rolled into one, and she rolls her eyes and you try to surreptitiously edge a little closer, sliding your arm along the back of the sofa in the least subtle move ever.

“I’m ignoring that because you obviously just weren’t paying attention.” She smirks at you, looks at your arm, eyebrow raised, but doesn’t ask you to move it, if anything she seems to move closer, or she suddenly feels closer to you anyway.

“So have we been on enough dates that I didn’t know were dates for a first kiss?” You ask, and she pretends to think about it, but it’s her that leans in, and she’s smiling as she kisses you for the first time, her hand slipping underneath your hair and your hand cupping her jaw. You’re smiling too when you pull away, and it grows into a grin as you lean in to kiss her again, just because you can now, smiling too wide for it really to be successful but so is she.


End file.
